I just watched this horrible 'debate' between ex-Leftist David Horowitz, turned a total animal in typical apostate fashion, and Slavoj Zizek. and most of the stuff that Horowitz said was just paranoid nonsense: Obama is a communist, egged on by Latin American dictators, Hamas and the PLO are most responsible for the Palestinians' problems, etc. just horrific stuff. but nonetheless a few things resonated, and within it a creeping crisis of faith that has been lingering is bubbling to the surface, painfully.

first, a) that Leftism is a secular faith, something that I have proudly claimed on these very pages. to backtrack a bit, he argues that the vast majority of humans are unable to live with the cold reality that life is meaningless, that we are alive for but a half of a blink of an eye, only to fade into obscurity, soon to be forgotten... and while religion 'defers' this compensatory dream of redemption into the next life, Leftism demands it happen now, with wild dreams of a mythic proletarian revolution (details depending, varying by the strand). and that this vision is at odds with the core of human nature, so that when Leftists actually take power (read: Bolsheviks), they are faced with this dilemma that can only be resolved by eating at the quantity of liberty.

the allure of Lacan for me is not that he is 'right', just that he is cool and provides plenty of 'empty containers' that I can use to place my own thoughts into boxes that make them sound more profound than they are. one of these is negation: the Woman does not exist, there is no sexual relation. I can live with all that. but, what I cannot live with, at this moment: what if the Revolution does not exist?

The revolution in the Marxian sense does not exist. That much ought to be clear by now.

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If I'm shown as having been active here recently it's either because I've been using the gallery, because I've been using the search engine looking up something from way back, or because I've been reading the most excellent UK by-elections thread again.

The "revisionist" reformers were wiser than Marx in that the established order evolves over time instead of being held firmly in place by a conspiring, ruling class of elites until they are usurped in a violent revolution. With all due respect I would also state that socialists who still retain faith in the primacy of class struggle and the allocation of economic capital in explaining all of the problems of society have their heads shoved woefully far up their asses. I do respect Marx as a bold thinker and a great contributor to the social sciences, but not all of his ideas aged well.

The "revisionist" reformers were wiser than Marx in that the established order evolves over time instead of being held firmly in place by a conspiring, ruling class of elites until they are usurped in a violent revolution. With all due respect I would also state that socialists who still retain faith in the primacy of class struggle and the allocation of economic capital in explaining all of the problems of society have their heads shoved woefully far up their asses. I do respect Marx as a bold thinker and a great contributor to the social sciences, but not all of his ideas aged well.

That wasn't actually the intent. There can be struggle between factions as they vie for the influence needed to mediate social conflict in accordance to their respective goals and perceptions of morality and reality - it is just that those factions aren't so simple as proles versus bourgeoisie. The struggle is more the sum of interpersonal contests than of broad conspiracies. Class identification doesn't come naturally to folks. It is a social construct.

Clearly folks of all socioeconomic backgrounds must contribute positively to a better future for socialism to work. My beef is only with those people who reckon the Left's cause is a war against the rich. I do not know if you do.

The great shortcoming of the "revolution", and by that I assume you mean the Marxian one, is that it was conceived as a solution for the particular problems of a particular time, the time being the capitalist age and the problems being the misery of the common man; those problems would continue indefinitely until the people moved to Socialism and eventually Communism. What Marx did not realize, however, was that he was not in the capitalist age, but its prologue, the end of the mercantilist age and the dawn of the capitalist one. Marx assumed that this period would be as far as man would go, but he was wrong. Instead it progressed onward, into the age of what I call "liberal democratic industrial capitalism", or Ldic. in the Ldic era we saw massive and simultaneous increases in both the wealth and political participation of the "proletarian"; this essentially made the Marxian revolution redundant. This period is almost neatly contained in the confines of the 20th century, with its height rather symmetrically around 1950 in the West.

By the time his theories had begun to gain currency, the Ldic age had almost begun in Western nations, which is why you don't see revolutions there. Indeed the revolutions was confined to states that had just begun the mercantilism age- Russia. One can even make the argument the sole revolution began in Russia and communism was spread politically from there. But that is irrelevant- what matters is that society had on its own managed to address the problems Marx identified without revolution. Reldago has said it in far more succinct terms- Marx's ideas have not aged well.

As I said before, the Ldic age is largely coterminous with the 20th century- and so it too is coming to an end. This, after all, is the postindustrial society! I still support industry, but any moves shall be medium term at best- automation shall reduce any labor left. I think we are now entering what could be called the "corporate creative capitalist culture" (let's call this 4C). Here we have and economy in which the innovator, producer, and manager are all being combined into singular role- a good example of this being Instagram. In such a society, the service society, there shall be first no need for a means of production or a person to specifically produce it, and then the "proletarian" shall not even be limited to drudgery but wholly unnecessary. This cannot be sustained, but Marxian revolution shall not answer it.

There is a solution that is beginning to take shape in my mind. It is radical and nothing less than the polar opposite of what we are discussing here.

In such a society, the service society, there shall be first no need for a means of production or a person to specifically produce it, and then the "proletarian" shall not even be limited to drudgery but wholly unnecessary. This cannot be sustained, but Marxian revolution shall not answer it.

There is a solution that is beginning to take shape in my mind. It is radical and nothing less than the polar opposite of what we are discussing here.

In such a society, the service society, there shall be first no need for a means of production or a person to specifically produce it, and then the "proletarian" shall not even be limited to drudgery but wholly unnecessary. This cannot be sustained, but Marxian revolution shall not answer it.

There is a solution that is beginning to take shape in my mind. It is radical and nothing less than the polar opposite of what we are discussing here.

The "revisionist" reformers were wiser than Marx in that the established order evolves over time instead of being held firmly in place by a conspiring, ruling class of elites until they are usurped in a violent revolution. With all due respect I would also state that socialists who still retain faith in the primacy of class struggle and the allocation of economic capital in explaining all of the problems of society have their heads shoved woefully far up their asses. I do respect Marx as a bold thinker and a great contributor to the social sciences, but not all of his ideas aged well.

The "revisionist" reformers were wiser than Marx in that the established order evolves over time instead of being held firmly in place by a conspiring, ruling class of elites until they are usurped in a violent revolution. With all due respect I would also state that socialists who still retain faith in the primacy of class struggle and the allocation of economic capital in explaining all of the problems of society have their heads shoved woefully far up their asses. I do respect Marx as a bold thinker and a great contributor to the social sciences, but not all of his ideas aged well.

Capital is not personal.

A fair correction, ya. Nonetheless, I consider capital to be divided into symbolic, cultural, social, and economic flavors in the Bourdieuan interpretation of Neo-Weberian thought, and look at social conflict and all hierarchical arrangements among people that ensue as impossible to fully remove from society. The Marxist's fixation on economic capital overlooks the importance of symbols, domains, and strategic conversions of capital. I would argue that a classless society is possible in popular perception only - not in reality - that all means of production can never truly be owned or controlled in common for sole use in advancing the People's interests. Revolutions, at least so far as I am aware, can only ever replace an arrangement of hierarchies and institutions with another.

but when u have da 4c's rich homebois, da young money, anyway da bois spitting rimes dont get much money. you have mark zukerbuerg and all that kind of s--t. they got all the jobs. they are all the jobs. when life works like that u dont need the homboys, screw hoffa or labor or the congress- they aint what's needed and they become broke mofos. back in the ldic days they wuld be livininthe burbs, in the hood and then in the projects, now they dont got no job and they cant learn no cloud computin or whatever the latest s--t is.

what ya gotta do is keep ldic livin as long as ya can- squeeze da f---n life out of that. ya godda get da factorys, da stil meels, da auto plants back and keep em. da robots will take en later, but keep it while ya can. ya want to get a society where everybody is booghwahsee. but dats as likely to gonna happen as marxs revolution. thats where my idea comes in. yall are gonna be s--tin ya pants ova it.

yall are free to report dis s--t to the mods, but know that snitchses get stiches. Anyway i hate to carjak a tweed thread gan. peace

but when u have da 4c's rich homebois, da young money, anyway da bois spitting rimes dont get much money. you have mark zukerbuerg and all that kind of s--t. they got all the jobs. they are all the jobs. when life works like that u dont need the homboys, screw hoffa or labor or the congress- they aint what's needed and they become broke mofos. back in the ldic days they wuld be livininthe burbs, in the hood and then in the projects, now they dont got no job and they cant learn no cloud computin or whatever the latest s--t is.

what ya gotta do is keep ldic livin as long as ya can- squeeze da f---n life out of that. ya godda get da factorys, da stil meels, da auto plants back and keep em. da robots will take en later, but keep it while ya can. ya want to get a society where everybody is booghwahsee. but dats as likely to gonna happen as marxs revolution. thats where my idea comes in. yall are gonna be s--tin ya pants ova it.

yall are free to report dis s--t to the mods, but know that snitchses get stiches. Anyway i hate to carjak a tweed thread gan. peace

I just use jargon as a shortcut to help me avoid posting huge blocks of text nobody would set aside time to read. I've got a lot to learn, sure, and seldom hesitate to alter the definitions for words when it suits my purposes. Still, is there a reason Sibboleth only swoops into threads like this to post a couple brief, typically condescending sentences at a time? I have the impression he is a pretty smart guy but it is hard to gain any new insights when so little is said. On a separate note, I approve of the bow-tie. O.o

Tweed, I think I asked you this before, but how do you reconcile your revolution/seizing the means of production with the deindustrialization of the First World and the increasing shift to service sector work? Seizing the means of fast food production?